


Twenty Six Redwood Heights

by paintkettle



Series: All The Colours Between Us [4]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Intrigue, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-22 05:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9585440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintkettle/pseuds/paintkettle
Summary: Redwood Heights, where modern planning, design, comfort and security all combine, here, ready for a new age.Welcome home.— Archived Zootropolis property sales brochure, original printing date unknown.When ZPD Officers Hopps and Wilde are called to investigate a suspicious complaint at Redwood Heights — a tumbledown apartment complex caught on the edge of Happytown — they find a difficult past and troubled present.Previously, chapters one to four were part of theAll The Colours Between Uspart-work.





	1. Ardmond And Juniper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Walking through the dew in the still morning, Juniper’s paw trembled slightly._
> 
> _Her ears stiffened._
> 
> _She could hear sirens, somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual, not in Happytown._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some upsetting content, so please bear that in mind before continuing.

Redwood Heights had seen better days.

When a young beaver, Ardmond Holt, had moved into the new, clean ground floor apartment numbered twenty six with his newly-wed wife Juniper — who had  _adored_ the little garden plot that their front door opened onto — the organic curves and terraces of the buildings and their fresh render had shone and shimmered, bright as the couple’s own eyes in the spring sunlight. 

The apartment itself was soon filled with all manner of time-saving appliances, a little top-loader washing machine, a fridge with a freezer compartment, and shortly after that, a television, all paid for by Ardmond’s new job working for Planning and Navigation in the city.

Conceived and built as Zootropolis itself had begun to look up and to peer from beneath the shadows of old,  _old_  prejudices that had plagued it for generations, Redwood Heights stood  _proud_.

Change was in the air. Change for the better.

But soon, that idealistic decade gave way to one of poverty, distrust and decay. Redwood Heights soon faltered too and then quickly became another enclave in the growing concrete jungle that came to be known as Happytown.

Ardmond and Juniper had watched things fall around them, and had tried their best to adapt. 

Ardmond’s city department downscaled drastically and as he came home with his papers, they both had to work jobs they hated to gather what they could to pay the lease on their little apartment, where they could be together and share that garden they loved.

When the times came to retreat from their garden and to safety behind their locked apartment door, when Ardmond had been mugged and came home with cuts he couldn’t afford the care for, or Juniper had been spoken to badly by another mammal, or when they heard the fighting outside in the night, they tried hard to look beyond those unbidden old prejudices that had begun to return to the city.

There were times apart when they were frightened, times apart when they nearly broke, but together, they were so much stronger. Together, they sat and remembered those idealistic times that had brought them here and held fast, always looking to the dawn while their eyes were still bright. 

Countless neighbours came and went, some willingly, some less so. A diminishing list of friends had asked if Ardmond and Juniper might do the same and move on, but even though living in Redwood Heights was  _hard_ , they still loved their little ground floor apartment and its garden.

In the times where mammals had to give up so much, the love that called those things  _home_  just couldn’t let go. 

But slowly by degrees and, as if to repay Ardmond and Juniper for their faith, Zootropolis began to remember itself again. Over the years, jobs returned and with them some prosperity, and a little hope.  _Anyone could be anything_ , came the renewed cries and slogans and processions.

But Redwood Heights had been broken along with the rest of Happytown. It could never stand as proudly as it had once done, all those years ago. It wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t be quiet, it would stumble and fall sometimes, but as the time wore on and the city built itself back up around it, it seemed as if Redwood Heights, like Happytown, like  _Zootropolis_  might see better days once more. 

They only had to persevere, as Ardmond and Juniper had done.

 

* * *

 

It was nearly mid August and as the sun rose, the day started early. 

It had been a strange few months and change had come quickly once more. Ex-Mayor Lionheart had been removed from office in a scandal that had shook the city. Reports of predatory attacks on mammals were becoming more frequent and no-one seemed to know the cause, least of all the ZPD, who had stumbled through press conference after press conference. Public opinion was being divided, and had began to turn as sour as it had done years ago.

Juniper had been in her garden that morning, making the most of the long, already warm day, removing the cans, cartons and other detritus loitering mammals had scattered in the grass the short night before, and turning to tend the few bright blooms that had flourished in late spring in the flowerbeds near the apartment.

Juniper had left Ardmond to rest in the kitchen while she went to work, carefully pruning and lifting. He listened with growing concern to the bleating of the new City Mayor, Bellwether, on the little radio they kept by the window. The sheep was conversational and reassuring, even if her words were not.

_…collective gatherings of predators are to be controlled and broken up if necessary…_

_…the City will be considering curfews to manage the situation…_

Padding through the dew in the still morning, Juniper’s paw trembled slightly as she kneaded the corners of the box she held. The metal cans clinked.

Her ears stiffened.

She could hear sirens, somewhere, but that wasn’t unusual, not in Happytown. 

There was another sudden noise, claws scrabbling on stone that instinctively caught her breath and made her sit up, made her kind eyes suddenly sharpen.

A pine marten had bounded in from an alley beyond the archway that opened out the small rounded, shaped area of shared asphalt sitting between the apartment blocks. Crouched low, shoulders heaving as it breathed heavily, it’s dark eyes settled quickly on the old beaver clutching her box of garden rubbish. The pine marten suddenly breathed out a long hiss that curled it's mouth open, exposing tiny needles that glistened in the morning light. It drew up, poised on it’s haunches.

For heartbeats, they stared at each other, until shouting startled the animal. 

_ZPD! Stop right there!_

With a snarl it twisted and leapt, scrabbling up across a low roof and away into the labyrinth of Happytown beyond. Juniper took a sharp breath and blinked.

_Oh._

It was then the pain came. 

_Ardmond._

Juniper managed to falteringly call his name before she  _gasped_  again and crumpled, her legs folding beneath her, the box of garden refuse dropping beside her, the contents spilling back into the damp grass.

_Juniper!_

Ardmond ran out to her as best and as fast as his stiff legs could, his arm knocking suddenly and painfully against the door frame, his rheumy eyes wide with the shock and filled with sudden, stinging tears as he knelt to hold her close. 

She panted for breath, her eyes darting, growing dim.

The blue and red beacons of the ZPD vehicles crowded near the archway in the distance span and the clack-clack of claws sounded again as an Officer began to run over, barking into a radio.

And Ardmond called out for help, for  _anyone_ , for  _Juniper_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a one-shot I'd written, which prompted me to turn it into a larger work originally published in the _All The Colours Between Us_ part-work. It remains largely unchanged here with only a few edits to broaden some characters and take into account some events in later chapters.
> 
> Although this story takes place as part of a series, I've tried to make sure it could stand on its own. Where I reference events in earlier parts, I've noted them in the end notes of each chapter for clarity.
> 
> The most significant change in this particular chapter is the animal that threatened Juniper - now a pine marten, rather than a tiger which felt like a better choice in terms of like-for-like scale.


	2. The Gardener

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Her eyes were soft and kind as she smiled back out from the photograph._
> 
> _What had he said to make her smile like that?_
> 
> _Perhaps he hadn’t needed to say anything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The start of this chapter contains some content that might be upsetting for some readers.

The summer moved quickly to autumn.

Ardmond sat alone, quiet and still on the modest sofa that he and Juniper had brought in the thrift store, how many years ago now he couldn’t recall.

How strange he  _could_  remember the day one of those sofa springs, brittle with age had broken, collapsed under Juniper as she sat back. 

Her eyes had been wide with surprise and laughter as Ardmond had pulled her up from the deep impression she’d left.

They’d repaired it together, reinforcing the springs with canvas webbing, and made do.

He glanced to the slight dip and worn fabric of the seat close next to him, as he held a small photo-frame tightly in his paws, kneading the corners lightly with his thumb pads.

He’d taken the photograph held inside in the spring. He’d written the date on the back of print, to remind himself.

Juniper’s fur was dappled and streaking with grey, but her orange dress and brown sweater were bright like the autumn sun itself.

It was one of the last days they’d spent away from Redwood Heights. They’d saved some money from Juniper’s part-time work at the little diner a block east which had supplemented Ardmond’s meagre Zootropolis pension, and they had taken a trip to the Canal District.

Her eyes were soft and kind as she smiled back out from the photograph. 

What had he said to make her smile like that?

Perhaps he hadn’t  _needed_  to say anything.

He held onto the frame tightly, and wept and shook as the grief took hold once more.

 

* * *

 

It was a long winter. 

The endless loops of buried pipework that fed warming water from the heat pumps and exchangers in the Climate Wall out under the main districts of Savannah Central didn’t extend as far as Redwood Heights, so when the hard frost came, it dug in deep.

The flowerbeds became bare, the colourful bulbs retreating to hibernate while the evergreens persevered, clung with hoarfrost each morning.

Ardmond tried to keep busy, to keep active, not least because heating the apartment had grown ever more expensive, but it became difficult as his body was beginning to protest with increasing frequency.

Ardmond’s friends had now diminished to the social services nurse, a broadly built badger who visited weekly, although Ardmond could barely cover the costs.

Ardmond had resisted. It had been another outgoing he could ill afford. But it was important, now more than ever that Ardmond had company, at least. When the nurse had been there to help him when he was laid low, to call him back from that freezing grief that had taken hold again, Ardmond had been thankful. 

In the months of recovery that followed, the nurse had suggested he might carry on with Juniper’s work in the garden when the spring finally came. It would keep him active, keep him from sitting indoors where the grief built up like stale air in a windowless room. 

It would be the best way to remember Juniper.

 

* * *

 

Spring struggled. 

There were weeks when the warm, wet air rose up from the seas to the south of Zootropolis, and days when the winds snapped, pushing dry freezing air down from Tundratown. 

But, the weather had slowly begun to improve and Ardmond took to clearing away the weeds and tangles that had grown wild throughout the winter.

He bought padding for his stiffening knees to make it easier to work on the hard ground and to stop the cold dew from soaking his legs.

Ardmond bought new evergreens and other shrubs and planted them carefully near the wall, where they would catch the warming sun from the south.

But one day, the stiffness in his legs had grown too great. His nurse arranged a home visit from a doctor, who had rotated Ardmond’s knees and ankles and made the beaver twist his face in pain. 

Confined to the apartment and sleepy from the painkillers, Admond sat and cast his heavy eyes around the memories and keepsakes that Juniper had left behind.

From her photograph, Juniper watched with her kind eyes as Ardmond slept.

The next day, the nurse had brought the walking frame.

Ardmond’s frustration as he shuffled around the small apartment with this stiff and cumbersome apparatus was tempered by the support it afforded him outside. 

The meagre work he’d put into the garden meant that for a few short weeks at least, he could enjoy it without needing to strain his joints again, or slow his recovery.

The following morning however, his anger broke as he emerged from the apartment to find, amongst the crocuses and evergreens, wrappers and cartons left by in the wake of some late night feasting by a passing mammal.

Juniper had always dealt with it patiently, tidying and tending as she went. But that morning for Ardmond, it was too much. 

“Hey, friend.”

Ardmond, struggling to move the litter aside with a short length of cane, looked up to see who had spoken.

The sheep, a ram whom Ardmond only dimly recalled as living up on the third floor, approached down the terraced steps of the tower opposite.

“That’s a nice garden. Such a shame it keeps getting spoiled,” the sheep said with a thick Meadowlands accent. “I’d like to keep one, but y’know. Third floor.”

The sheep shrugged. “Meh,” he bleated.

Ardmond shuffled a little, angling his walking frame between himself and the stranger.

“I’ve written to the alderman about this,” Ardmond began hesitantly. “They always say they’d need more cameras, more officers, and that all costs more money.”

Ardmond shook his head in resignation.

“I hear you, friend,” the ram mused, rubbing a hoof through the salt-and-pepper wool around his jowls. ”They just keep ploughing the big money into places all over, except where it’s needed.”

“Now, I can’t help with that, but I  _can_  help you pick the rubbish up,” the ram continued, with a smile. “You look like you could do with the help, anyways.” The sheep took a step forward.

“I’m almost done, but thank you,” Ardmond replied, waving a paw. “Maybe next time.”

“Sure, friend. The offers there,” the ram nodded and went on his way.

 

* * *

 

Over next few days, the sheep, who had introduced himself as Russell, stopped by more frequently and was always concerned to see Ardmond stooping stiffly to move aside the debris that accumulated in his garden. 

They had talked and grown familiar, and when Adrmond had been sure he could trust the sheep, he had finally decided to engage Russell’s help in clearing and tending the garden. Ardmond’s nurse was happy too, glad that he was interacting with others again, and had reduced their routine visits to once a fortnight.

Russell had shown some particular talent with flora when, one morning, Ardmond had found one of the limbs on a bush Juniper had been fond of had been snapped carelessly by a passer-by.

Russell had helped Ardmond prepare the graft and bound the broken limb in place.

“Don’t worry, a few weeks and that graft’ll take. Be as good as new,” Russell had assured him, and true enough, after a week, the trunk had grown around the graft and the bush had been made whole again.

Ardmond had asked what Russell did for work. He was so proficient at caring for the garden, Ardmond was sure he must have worked on a farm or as a gardener before his time at Redwood Heights.

“I studied Botanical Sciences at Zootropolis U,” Russell had confirmed. “I was going to move back out to Podunk when I graduated. Had it  _all_  planned out. But, I got the letter; the work dried up, literally. Hottest summer on record out there beyond the biome, three years ago, and I had  _debts_ , friend. And, well. When the devil drives,” he shrugged.

“I got enough work here and thereabouts, but I’ve got a couple of jobs coming up towards Rainforest. Things grow well there, friend.  _Real well._ ” He was working on transplanting some crocuses that Ardmond had bought to replace some that had been trampled only days earlier.

“Great things,” The ram said as he held one in his hoof, head tilted to regard the little flower as it trembled in the breeze. “When you treat them right, they repay you a thousand fold.”

 

* * *

 

The day came when Russell moved on. The work he had talked about in Rainforest had called him in, and when he came to let Ardmond know, the beaver had invited the sheep inside the apartment. 

“The money’s good, I reckon, so I might be able to find a shack up in Favela,” the sheep said, tapping a hoof on the breakfast counter-top. “I’m sorry it was such short notice. But as a thank-you for letting me — well, practice my art, I guess you could say — I’d like to give you something, friend.”

He slowly pushed a small cardboard box across the breakfast counter to Ardmond.

“Something to help keep the rubbish out,” the ram said.


	3. Do You Hear That?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Look, I know how much you’ve grown to love desk-work,” Judy grinned._
> 
> _“But, I for one am glad we got an outdoor assignment today, aren’t you?”_
> 
>  
> 
> Officers Hopps and Wilde are called to an unconventional noise disturbance at Redwood Heights.

Officer Nick Wilde sucked his teeth, turning to gaze out at the rows of tightly packed buildings rising and falling as they passed by.

He peered over the top of the mirrored lenses of his aviators. The road beneath the Prowler made gentle thumps as it’s wheels caught the edges of potholes and rolled over the patchwork of hasty asphalt repairs.

With a push of a claw tip, he slid the sunshades back up the bridge of his muzzle.

“Not  _quite_  that Rainforest assignment we’d hoped for,” he murmured.

After spotting some reports from the Rainforest District that had lain unprocessed for weeks, he had flagged them up eagerly, hoping to catch the assignment for himself and his partner Officer Judy Hopps. He later found they had vanished. Snaffled up by another Officer, no doubt.

He’d sulked like a fox half his age when his information requests went unanswered, and dragged himself languidly around for the rest of the last shift, driving Judy to distraction in the little space they had begun to carve out on the ZPD team desk.

“Hm. No, it is  _not_ ,” Judy observed tersely. 

Whilst she was glad to be assigned outside away from the yellowing lights in the office, she was equally glad their assignment here, to a residence inside the vague limits of Happytown, was during daylight hours. 

Happytown  _had_  improved in recent years, but it was still not a particularly suitable place for a rabbit unfamiliar with the streets and alleys, or even a fox who claimed to know everyone to be after dark.

“But, it’s been what now — just under a week since you flagged that?” 

Judy shrugged as she flicked on a turn signal. 

“You’ve got a lot to learn about how paperwork  _actually_  works, Wilde.”

Even after the successful conclusions of the Missing Mammals case and subsequent uncovering of Bellwether’s conspiratorial plans that led to the ewe’s incarceration, Judy could count on one paw the amount of work-ups she’d completed that had  _actually_ turned into assignments. When most of them had ultimately led to little more than regular patrol or cordon watch duty for her and accolades for others, she found that whilst she  _was_  sympathetic, she wasn’t particularly sorry or even surprised on Nick’s behalf.

_The trials of a rookie._

“Look, I know how much you’ve grown to love desk-work,” Judy grinned. “But,  _I_  for one am  _glad_  we got an outdoor assignment today.”

Pulling a paw down on the steering wheel, she swung the Prowler gently into and down the new road, passing an overgrown street sign.

Redwood Heights, it read. 

“Aren’t you?”

Nick shrugged a dismissive little agreement as Judy rolled the Prowler towards a stop. The whine of the parking sensor made sure she didn’t roll their large tyres over the smaller scale vehicles already parked up. She shut the engine off. Her paw was at her shoulder, pulling at her radio. It warbled as she pressed a claw to the talkback.

“Dispatch, this is Hotel Whiskey Five Six.”

The radio chirruped for a moment.

“Hotel Whiskey Five Six, this is Dispatch,” came the response.

“Officers Hopps and Wilde in attendance at Redwood Heights.”

Another warble.

“Copy, Hotel Whiskey Five Six.”

“C’mon then,” Judy said, pulling on the hat that was part of her uniform. Her deft claws smoothed at the brim, while Nick swung open his door.

“Wilde,” Judy called.

The fox turned to look back.

“Hat,” Judy pointed to her own, nose twitching.

“Yes. Looks good on you, Carrots,” he smirked. “Much better than that old meter-maid bonnet you used to wear.”

“No,  _your_  hat.  _Regulations_ , Slick,” said Judy, eyes set, patiently watching as Nick opened the glovebox, checked the side door compartment, craned his neck to look behind him, and finally swiped a paw under his passenger seat.

With and a little “Ah-ha,” he fished out his own hat and, dusting away the shed fur it had collected, dropped it onto his head. 

“Hm,” he mumbled, trying to get it to sit properly.

It hung at an angle, shifting as his ears settled against the weight. He pushed the Prowler door closed behind him with a dull thump. Nick’s hat bobbed, level with the bottom of the door window.

She watched as the hat slunk away.

A shoulder check, and her door was open now. She jumped down from the boosted seat and with a  _thump_  of the door and a _plip_ of her key fob, Judy locked the Prowler.

She walked ahead carefully but calmly towards the archway above the entrance to Redwood Heights. A trio of young mammals — a dingo, a cougar, and an ibex — were stood up against the wall with a small radio between them. The bass-heavy music made the tiny speaker buzz and ring, setting Judy’s teeth on edge.

The pack shifted uneasily as they regarded the two Officers approaching them. Nick’s claws were scuffling on the pavement behind her.

“Hey, Officer,” called one of the pack, the cougar. Judy’s ears rose to push her hat to one side slightly. She brought her paws up to steady it.

“Officer, you looking to speak to someone about the noise?” asked the cougar, peering from under her jacket hood. 

She was perhaps only a few years younger than Judy, but she stood high above the rabbit's eye-line, Nick’s too. The cougar’s dark ears quivered a little beneath the canvas hood that loosely covered them.

“We received a complaint, yes,” Judy nodded curtly. “Do you know anything about it?”

She was met with silence. The rabbit started at the pack’s little radio sat on the brick ledge behind them.

Judy’s nose twitched, her brow creasing with a frown. 

“I’m sorry, could you just,” Judy looked up at the ibex, pointed at the radio near him and made a little twisting motion with her paw. With a sigh, the ibex complied. Judy nodded.

“So do you? Know anything about it?” Judy leaned in a little.

“Nuh-uh, Officer,” the cougar shook her head, making a little noise that curled a lip and perhaps unintentionally, showed a glimpse of tooth.

“We can sure hear it, though,” she added, wincing a little as she indicated behind her with a roll of her head, back towards the archway. The dingo looked up from his phone and both he and ibex nodded in agreement.

Nick rolled his lips around his teeth, leaning cautiously to peer through the archway beyond, pulling his aviators down a little to peer over them again. He raised a curious eyebrow.

“Okay. Well, we need to check it out,” Judy announced. She looked back to the cougar, who was impatiently regarding the paving at her feet.

“Thank you for your time,” Judy added, nodding stiffly. 

Within the two steps she had taken to the archway, the radio had been turned back up, buzzing and keening. Judy looked to Nick, who shrugged impassively.

Once under the archway, Judy surveyed the space at the heart of Redwood Heights. Multi-scale apartments surrounded it, and for the most part, curtains, blinds, towels, whatever was at hand, were drawn across their windows. She followed the graceful curves of the walls around and up, up to the top of the blocks that made up the Heights. Built up terraces undulated like a canyon, worn smooth. Here and there, wind-blown seeds had settled and grown to crown the little terraces with hanging trails of vegetation.

“Oh, they have gardens here,” Judy sighed to herself, spotting the individual plots outside every ground floor door she could see. She was a little jealous. Her city apartment had little more than a small window box that she had to keep propped on the inside sill.

Her nose wrinkled when she saw that they were mostly overgrown, or scrubby, nearly all filled with cast-aside cartons, or were now a seemingly permanent home to an oversize sofa, piled high with the clutter that wouldn’t fit indoors anymore and cost too much to pay for collection.

It was quiet. The traffic swished and droned gently, the occasional horn blow punctuating the sound drifting from the flyover in the distance.

Other than the mammals at the archway, Judy had yet to see a single resident. Diurnal and nocturnal rhythms aside, it wasn’t exactly early or late, either way. It was unusual to see  _anywhere_  in Zootropolis look so deserted, whatever the time of day.

Judy became aware that Nick had fallen back. She turned to look for him. He was stood a few metres back from her, clutching at his ears, his face twisting.

“Nick?” she asked.

“ _Agh_ ,” he moaned. “Can’t you hear it, Hopps? Dispatch wasn’t kidding when they said it was a  _noise complaint_. Over there!” 

He was speaking loudly, as if he was trying to hold a conversation in a noisy room and hesitantly pointed a trembling claw over to one of the nearby gardens. He quickly snapped his paw back to clamp over his quivering flattened ear.

“I can’t hear anything,” Judy said, for a moment thinking Nick was just fooling around. The look in his eyes told her he was not.

“With those ears, Carrots?”  _Gnn_.” He started to back up a little, wincing away from whatever was bothering him.

Judy looked back to follow earlier Nick’s direction, and bounded to make up the short distance to the corner he’d pointed towards.

She’d become aware of it now, a tiny,  _tiny_ noise, one barely registering, despite her normally acute hearing. Was this what Nick could hear? It was like nothing at all to her ears, rising and falling like breath at night.

She cast her eyes around. There were more gardens here, more unkempt scrubby little rectangles that reminded Judy of the fallow fields of Bunnyburrow. 

Except one. 

Someone looked after that garden, Judy thought. Or at least had done until recently. The grasses had begun to grow taller, but the flowerbeds were still sound, and weren’t choked with weeds. The telltale signs of long periods of care and attention were still visible, and, Judy noticed, it wasn’t filled with BugBurga cartons or papers like the others were.

Judy thought the tiny sound would grow louder as she drew nearer, but it remained that same quality, rising and falling with an eerie delicacy.

And there, in the scrubby little bushes that separated that garden from the paving Judy was stood on was a small dark, nondescript box, a tiny cherry-red light glowing atop and a faint suggestion of a mesh on one side, angled towards the open space behind her.

As she crouched, her ears suddenly became erect. Judy took her hat off this time as her thoughts were overtaken by training.

_There’s a suspicious item in a garden in Happytown._

Angling her head to one side, she resisted the urge to reach and pick it up, to turn it over on her paws. A sound that had no direction or volume felt so  _alien_  to Judy, but she wanted to understand it.

_Small. No wires, no tape. Nothing to suggest improvisation, and doesn’t look like any ordnance I’m familiar with, but…_

She could feel her ears rotating instinctively, trying to locate the source of the delicate rising and falling that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.

As she studied the device, she could hear Nick groaning in the distance as he shuffled, keeping his distance.

 _It’s suspicious. And it’s doing_  that. 

_You need to manage those risks. Remember?_

Without taking her eyes away from the little box, she put her paw to her shoulder. There was a warble.

“Dispatch. This is Officer Hopps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For readers who have come to this series via this work, Nick's paperwork was filed in _Painting the Climate Wall_.


	4. Special Disposals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What do you think it is?” Judy asked._
> 
> _“Noisy, is what it is,” came the fox’s low response through gritted teeth._

Officer Lau, a Special Disposals Technician, crouched on his forepaws to study the little dark box. He advanced cautiously, snout quivering. 

The heavy-set pangolin tilted his head slowly left, then right, then left again as he examined the device closely with his small dark eyes. His ears, partially hidden by his scales were covered by a set of bright yellow defenders he’d unfurled and pulled on almost as soon as he walked under the archway leading to Redwood Heights.

Judy held a soft cordon there, keeping mammals back from the scene, although the apparent noise some could hear was doing most of that work for her. Other mammals, like Judy, didn’t seem to hear it at all, or did so only in varying degrees. Of the few mammals who had lingered, Nick was the most uncomfortable.

Judy had shooed away the curious, and sought to reassure residents who’d emerged while Lau went to work. 

“Please,  _sir_. We need you to remain  _indoors_ ,” she called firmly, bounding over to the opening doorway nearby. She held her paws up to block the rabbit that had emerged. He was shifting from foot to foot, craning over Judy to tray and get a view of what the hunched pangolin in the distance was busying himself with. Judy carefully positioned herself in the rabbit’s path.

“I’ve got an  _appointment_ ,” he said, glancing at his watch as he edged forward, half listening to Judy.

“Please, we need you to remain indoors for the time being, and for you stay  _calm_.” With a little work, Judy managed to guide the rabbit back over his threshold.

“We’ll let you know as soon as its safe,” she smiled brightly, pulling the door closed by the night-latch before padding quickly away with a sigh and shake of her head back to the cordon, to focus her attention back to Officer Lau, some distance away.

When Judy had shown Lau the images of the device she’d captured on her phone, he’d peered closely at the little screen for some time. Then, nodding calmly, and without a word, he began walking stiffly to the garden Judy had found the object.

“What do  _you_  think it is?” she’d asked Nick as the pangolin lumbered away.

“ _Noisy_ , is what it is,” came the fox’s low response through gritted teeth.

The pangolin raised his head and turned slowly to look back at the Officers. Judy saw him holding out his flat paw towards them, claws steady and straight for a moment. Then, curling them tight, he gave a claws-up signal. 

Judy relaxed back a little, although her ears still quivered nervously.

Lau turned his attention forward once more and carefully, he reached out to flick a little sliding nub on the mysterious box to one side. With that done, he made it safe, unclipping a door set flush into the case and catching a pair of power cells as they tumbled out.

Nick, who had been holding the cordon alongside Judy and as close as he could bear to be to the noise, suddenly relaxed with a shudder.

“Ohh-ho ho, thank  _you_!” he moaned loudly in very obvious relief, rolling his head, paw up to keep his hat in place, his hackles settling flat.

Lau pulled his ear defenders down to rest around his wide neck. He shuffled slowly over to the two Officers, the device between his claws. “Your evidence,” he nodded, offering the object to Judy.

“It’s safe,” he added as she hesitated to take it from him. He motioned it towards her once more.

“Oh, one second,” Judy’s ears perked as her paw went to her uniform to retrieve an evidence bag. She shook it out and offered the open neck to Hawley. He shrugged, scales bristling, as he dropped the box and power cells inside.

It barely had any weight.

“So, what is it?” she asked, rolling it over in her paws, looking for any kind of marking, any clue to its purpose.

There were no serial numbers, no manufacturer marks. Just an anonymous little box. She squinted up at the Disposals Officer.

“A repeller,” said the pangolin.

“Uses sound,” he continued. “To keep mammals away from hazardous sites, multi-scale construction, for security too, sometimes.”

“I couldn’t hear it,” Judy mused. 

“No. It all depends on hearing range. It’s adjustable. That way, it doesn’t affect mammals working, while it keeps others away,” Lau explained. “All automatic - there’s a sensor, so if you get too close,” The pangolin made to slowly cover his ears with his claws.

Nick had strolled over back over, his hat in paw as he absent-mindedly wiggled a claw of his own in his ear.

“You need don’t need specific licences to operate them but, outdoors like this?” Lau cast his dark eyes around him. “Because it’s sound, you  _do_  need to display warnings.”

“Hm.” Judy looked up from the evidence bag she was still tumbling over like a puzzle box.

“Officer Lau,” she finally said, brightly. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Lau nodded, and shuffled off to his boxy ZPD vehicle. Judy and Nick walked alongside him to their Prowler, trying to avoid the broad tail of the pangolin as he strode heavily away.

 

* * *

 

“Dispatch, this is Officer Hopps. I’m looking for a name-check on an address. Twenty six, Redwood Heights, Mid-Savannah please.” 

Judy’s paw was at her shoulder whilst she addressed her radio. She dug around in the Prowler door compartment for her charge book with the other. Once she’d retrieved the book, she looked around for a moment, before tucking it awkwardly into her protective claw-vest. Picking up the evidence bag containing the repeller off the seat, she jumped back to the asphalt. With a nudge of her back, the Prowler door closed with a soft thump.

“Hopps, Dispatch. The address is currently registered to a Mr. Ardmond C. Holt.”

“Thank you, Dispatch.” She brought her hat back up and over her head with a tug of a paw.

“Well, I don’t think anyone is likely to press charges any time soon, Fluff,” Nick announced as Judy padded up to his position at the entrance to Redwood Heights.

He’d canvassed a few residents to come forward, but they’d quickly dismissed the whole thing. Even the little pack of mammals had shrugged it off, soon returning to their favoured territory inside the Heights, the dingo slouching against the overgrown wall there, staring intently at his phone while the cougar and ibex laughed at some unheard joke.

The fox stood, arms folded across his chest as he watched the tumbledown terraces of apartments intently. The haphazard window coverings began to twitch open. The rabbit Judy had kept at bay was rushing away for his appointment, clutching a case of paperwork and making telephoned apologies for his lateness as he went. 

“No, I suppose not,” Judy breathed. “But, we need to speak to a Mr. Ardmond Holt, before we leave. If this is his, it’s a safety violation to operate it without displayed warnings.” Judy scowled, holding up the tightly wrapped evidence bag while she removed her charge book from it’s uncomfortable position. “This is a residential area, not a construction zone.”

 

* * *

 

The lintel of the front door to apartment number twenty six came level to Nick’s shoulders. He hung back, rocking on his heels, remaining on the cracked paving that bounded the property line.

Judy smartly rapped against the door and waited. Nick surveyed the overgrown curving walls of the buildings around him as the door to number twenty six cracked open as far as it’s little security chain would allow. An elderly beaver peered through the gap.

“Mr. Holt? Ardmond Holt?” asked Judy.

“Yes?” The beaver’s voice quavered a little as he squinted at the uniformed rabbit.

“Officer Hopps,” Judy tapped the badge on her vest. “Officer Wilde,” she waved a paw back to the fox at the fox. He removed his aviators and held up a paw to the badge of his own.

“We’re from the ZPD,” Judy added finally. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if we may? You probably noticed we were working around your apartment today,” Judy smiled as she leaned in a little. “May we come in?”

“The fox too?” Ardmond asked with narrowing eyes. “My apartment is a little small.”

Judy’s nose twitched monetarily. Judy opened her mouth to reply, but paused for moment, brow wrinkling a little.

“ _Officer Wilde_?” she emphasised for Ardmond’s benefit, before turning over her shoulder to Nick. “Would you wait here please?”

“Sure,” he grinned. “You go right ahead, Officer Hopps.”

Nick took a step back, waving a paw forward with a little flourish of claes and swinging a leg to turn away. He held his aviators by a single arm, pinched between his claws. Regarding the pack of mammals near the wall with interest, he slid the aviators on, adjusted them slightly and smiled reassuringly as he began to slink in their direction.

Ardmond released the door chain with a click. “Could you wipe your feet, please?” he said, eyes flicking down to Judy’s footpaws.

Judy walked through the hallway and ahead into the main living space, removing her hat as she went. Her ears unfurled and sprang up, glad the weight of the hat was gone.

She cast her eyes around the sparse yet cramped room. It reminded her a little of some of the more elderly family members rooms back home at the Hopps Warren. The same scents of mothballs and of mint, mingling of with the other scents of a room that was lived in perhaps night  _and_  day.

Furniture decorated with patterns that spoke of thrift and bygone fashions were covered with folded rugs in various earthy shades of plaid. 

Here and there were photographs, prompts for a failing memory, of Ardmond and another beaver - his wife or perhaps his sister? Judy couldn’t tell. 

Ardmond shuffled in behind his walking frame, moving towards the sofa. 

“May I sit, please?” he asked. Judy nodded.

He stiffly took a seat in one of the two depressions in the slightly sagging seat. He looked up at Judy with wet, rheumy eyes.

“What did you need to talk to me about, Officer?” Ardmond asked.

Judy placed the evidence bag containing the little repeller down on the low table in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The repeller device is based in part on ultrasonic pest repellers, but also on a device called the _Mosquito_ , which was apparently used in the past to keep crowds from forming in areas by broadcasting a high frequency sound, and deployed where loitering was considered an issue.
> 
> Special Disposals Technician Lau is a pangolin, and the protective scales covering his body would help keep him a good degree safer in his particular line of work.


	5. The Better Part of Discretion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Mr. Holt, I need to ask you some questions.”_

Judy had placed the tightly wrapped evidence bag containing the repeller on the low table in front of Adrmond, watching as his brow deepened in puzzlement and his mouth cracked open.

“Mr. Holt, I need to ask you some questions.” She placed her hat carefully down on the countertop nearby.

“Do you know anything about this item?” Judy watched as the beaver’s eyes twitched from the repeller, to her, and then back. “It was found it in your garden. It’s a mammal repeller — do you have any idea how it got there?” 

“You can find lots of things in the gardens here, Officer,” said Ardmond. His voice was thinner now. Judy thought he must have had a much deeper timbre in his youth. “Mammals leave their rubbish everywhere. Bottles, cartons,  _things_  you wouldn’t believe, sometimes.” Ardmond shook his head.

Her ears pricked up. She was keen to discover what the beaver knew about the little device, and whilst she acknowledged that yes, Redwood Heights had a litter problem, her nose wrinkled and twitched a little at the thought what else might end up in the gardens here, and she made a point not to pursue it.

Judy took a seat on a single wooden chair that stood beside the sofa, a blanket folded over its back. She drew closer to Ardmond, leaning forward as she seated herself. Her single paw lay flat on the table beside him, close to her carefully wrapped evidence.

“Well, that’s the thing Mr. Holt.  _Your_ garden seems to be the only one that isn’t full of rubbish. It must be hard work keeping it tidy.”

“My wife,  _Juniper_  took care of that. She loved the garden.” Ardmond rubbed at his knee as he spoke, kneading it a little with his paw. Nervously, perhaps. He raised his eyes to the bookshelf opposite.

“And where is your wife now, Mr Wolt?” Judy asked. Ardmond continued to gaze past the rabbit. She turned to follow his gaze, back to the bookshelf behind her.

There, positioned near a small cylinder — a vase, thought Judy — was the photograph of a smiling, greying beaver in an orange dress. 

“She passed away,” he said plainly, holding his gaze up to the photograph. “It was last summer.”

Oh,  _no_. Judy’s mind raced. The summer was when…

“She was scared to death by a mammal, gone  _savage_.”  Ardmond looked away.

“Oh.” The little noise escaped from Judy’s mouth, vanishing into the silence.

And in that little ground floor apartment, Judy felt the weight of all those other apartments above her pressing down suddenly, as her drying lips parted to whispered her sympathies. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Holt.” Her ears dropped flat now, tucking behind her as she spoke. 

The summer had been hard on everyone back here in the city, prey and predator alike. And though she’d been far from Zootropolis at the time, back home under Bunnyburrow’s big sky, no matter how deep she might have burrowed and dug there, she’d couldn’t have escaped it. 

It had been hard on her, and harder on Nick, she knew, even though he never spoke of it. But for Ardmond, that summer must have been nearly impossible to bear.

In those few moments it made her wonder about all the others who’d struggled through those dark summer days, that she might never meet, never know of.

“When we came here, Juniper and I, it was perfect, you know.” Ardmond began. “It was a long time ago, but we were happy.  _Everyone_  seemed happier, then.”

“Juniper used to keep our garden. She worked it even when this,” Ardmond motioned to the window. “This became a part of Happytown and everyone else had given up on theirs,” the beaver continued. “We loved that garden. When she left, I tried, but I couldn’t keep it, not alone. It’s all I have left, but I’m so tired these days.”

“A neighbour helped for a while,” Ardmond paused, his jaw working as he tried to work the memory lose. ”Russell,” he announced. ”He gave me that.” The beaver pointed a shaking claw at the evidence bag and the repeller contained within.

“And Russell? Where is he now?” asked Judy.

“He left. For, for work, in the ruh, rainforest, I think,” Ardmond replied uncertainly.

“So you tried to look after all this,” Judy raised her eyes, and motioned a paw around the apartment and toward the window overlooking the garden as Ardmond had done. “On your own?”

The beaver nodded. “I tried. It’s my legs. I’m  _old_. It’s  _difficult_.”

“Mr Holt, I’m going to have to ask you a question, and I need you to answer it before I can leave.” Judy shifted uneasily on the chair, leaning again, her eyes firm.

“Did you use a repeller to keep mammals away from your property, Mr Holt? Did you use this to help you?” Judy gripped the edge of the evidence bag. “This repeller?”

“Yes.”

There was a lump in Judy’s throat threatening to stopper her every word now.

“Mr. Holt,” she started, trying to keep her voice calm, level and professional as she reached for her charge book. 

Her heart ached. She held the charge book with both paws in front of her for a moment, pausing to open it.

And then, a look of resolve pinched her brow slightly and lifted her ears as it did so. She lowered the charge book to her knees, gently resting it there before placing her paws gently atop of it, one above the other. She straightened her back.

This wasn’t like any of those cases back at the Precinct, the ones she’d read about and analysed in the reports she’d had to process when she was a capacity resource. This wasn’t robbery. This wasn’t mugging, or an abuse, or someone left beaten in an alley somewhere.

This was someone not quite five minutes over the time they’d paid for at the parking meter, rushing back to their car just as Judy had hit the button to log the ticket. Someone driving through the city who’d glanced away from the speedometer for a moment and crept up over the limit, just as Judy had raised her speed gun and watched the digits flash accusingly on the readout.

There was no such thing as a victimless crime, she knew that, but the more she tumbled this  _whole thing_  over in her head, she was beginning to feel as if  _Ardmond_ might be that victim.

“Mr. Holt.” Her paws knitted tightly for a moment, claws coming together as she breathed  _out_. “Technically, you need to display warnings if you’re going to use devices like this. Did anyone explain that to you? Did Russell?”

The beaver had no answer. He either didn’t know or couldn’t remember.

“I need you to listen, Mr Holt. This is important. This device, it could have  _damaged_  some-mammals hearing. And if anyone had pressed you for it, you could have been facing an assault charge on top of everything else. I’d have to  _arrest_  you.”

She felt sure now he was only trying to keep the one thing that reminded him of happier times in the best condition he could. He hadn’t set out to do anything malicious and while she couldn’t excuse ignorance, she at least recognised it for the mistake it was.

“But under the circumstances, I’m going to give you a warning, Mr. Holt,” Judy advised, quietly and slowly, giving time for Ardmond to take in what she was saying.

“I’ll have to confiscate the repeller, for your own and others safety,” her nose twitching a little as she drew the evidence bag towards here. The plastic wrapping made a quiet rustling, “I won’t be issuing you with a penalty on this occasion.” With both paws now, she took hold of the charge book and drew both it and her evidence back towards her, close to her stomach.

“Do you understand, Mr Holt?” Judy asked. “Ardmond?”

Ardmond nodded once. His paw was shaking, Judy noticed. 

“I understand,” he whispered.

And in the quiet that followed, Judy felt she did, too. The rabbit shifted, the little chair holding her creaking in the quiet of the apartment.

Judy had tried to stand. _Case closed_ , she thought, and Nick would be out there doing who knows what, knowing him. But she couldn’t  _just leave._  She sat quietly watching as the beaver’s eyes fixed sadly once more on that photograph, up there on the bookshelf, a little window to look into and upon on happier times.

There were other photographs positioned around the little room; by the door and next to Ardmond’s seat, and there, angled carefully on the windowsill, and dotted across the little faux-mantlepiece over the low three-bar heater. Judy noticed there were no other faces in those photos. It was just Ardmond, and just Juniper. Perhaps it had only been the two of them, for all these years.

She felt her heart lurch as she began to weave all those captured moments together.

The beaver looked again to the repeller clasped tightly in Judy’s paws, seemingly caught between those photographs and that little box. Judy hated the thing now, hated that Ardmond had to resort to using it. Her eyes stung as she looked away.

“I’m sorry, Mr Holt, I really do have to take this. It’s really not something you should be using. It’s an industrial device. You do understand that, don’t you?” 

“I do, officer, but Juniper,” he began, before his voice faltered.

“Juniper,” Judy caught his trailing sentence. ”She loved that garden, you said. You  _both_ did, I can tell. But I don’t think she’d want to see you using something that might hurt others to protect it though, would she?”

The beaver’s face sharpened as he made to say something, before he shrank back, eyes lifted to the photographs again. The beaver in the orange dress smiled back at him.

“No. No, She wouldn’t,” he admitted softly. As he looked back to the rabbit again, Judy noticed a twinkle, a bright recollection catching the light in his rheumy eyes.

“She was a forgiving little beaver. Most days she was out there, tidying. It was like clearing leaves, she’d say,” the beavers voice lifted a little. “And she always said, you can’t be mad at the trees for doing what they do. My nurse said keeping the garden would be good for me. But how I  _can_  I keep our garden?” Ardmond rested his paw up on his nearby walking frame, grasping and trembling. “For Juniper?” 

Judy rose quietly to her feet. She took a breath and it almost faltered in her chest. “Mr. Holt,” she began, composing herself and straightening her uniform. ”Do you have a telephone?”

The beaver nodded.

Tucking her charge book and evidence bag back under one arm, Judy reached a paw down to her belt and drew out out her police notebook. “I _think_ ,” Judy announced with a click of the pen. “We can come up with an alternative to this.” She tapped the evidence bag, plastic rustling.

“A better one all round.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally planned to be a much longer chapter, but I thought in the end I'd let Ardmond and Judy have the stage to themselves at this point. Nick's part will follow in the next chapter.


	6. Mammals Live Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst Judy questions Ardmond, Nick works the crowd, and learns a little more about the sheep with a keen eye for gardening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prior to working on this chapter, I revised Chapter 5 (The Better Part of Discretion) a little - it landed a bit too low in the end, and I thought I'd try and give it a more positive outlook. Worth checking out the revision, as this chapter will hopefully carry that through.

The door clicked shut. Judy was going to be reading that old beaver Ardmond the riot act for sure, Nick thought. She was so  _by the book_ , it was painful sometimes.

Nick cast his eyes around as he slunk smoothly up to the trio of mammals, gathered across the small scrubby oasis of grass between the towers of the Heights. Perhaps that beaver  _had_ put the repeller in his own garden, perhaps not. There was barely enough CCTV coverage here to tell much more, but to even view recordings with so little  _actual_  evidence, well, that meant warrants and warrants meant paperwork and paperwork meant delays, so no. No, thank you.

Besides, CCTV reviews were so  _impersonal_.

The ibex, cougar and dingo had been slouching outside the archway when the Officers had arrived, and had kept their distance whilst the repeller was dealt with. Shortly after they’d moved back leaning on low brickwork that stepped up to a terrace, just beyond the central oasis. Back where they were most comfortable.

 _The home range_ , thought Nick as he begun to trace out a lazy arc towards them. the group began to shift around uneasily now, sharpening eyes watching him quietly.

He recalled with a smile when, in his youth — a whole world away now, it seemed — he’d often shifted uneasily when Officers approached. More often than not, he’d tried to shift in the opposite direction as fast as possible. But these mammals, they were standing firm.

He stopped, rocking gently upon his heels, moving his brushy tail side to side, but holding it low. He’d taken a position not so close as to fully cross the invisible demarcation that separated  _their_  space form everything else, but not so far away to be easily ignored by them, either. He waited, cycling through his practiced routine of attention seeking, listening to their radio buzzing quietly between them.

“Never seen a fox cop before, mate,” came the eventual, testing comment — the dingo, bristling, his tawny ears alert as he studied the fox’s uniform.

Nick’s flattened ears flicked up as much as his hat would allow. He turned his head upwards to follow the call, and raising his aviators up, peered along the length of his muzzle at the group. 

“So, how’d a  _fox_  get to be a cop?” The dingo called, tilting his head curiously to one side. The cougar and ibex, leaned in closely to each, looking on. The ibex frowned, his ears high and head back, as if unsure of which way the conversation might go. Nick pulled his mirrored aviators away, folding the arms as he hung them from his open breast pocket.

“ZPD Academy, same as any other cop.” Nick answered, matter of factly, before blowing out his cheeks, all his professional seriousness suddenly evaporating into a wide toothsome grin.

“Phew, it was a deal for  _this_  fox, let me tell you.” He’d stepped just a little closer now. The tip of the cougar’s tail twitched as it curled about her legs, and the dingo squinted as he looked Nick up and down. He lingered at Nick’s badge.

“I guess if I really  _am_  your first  _fox cop_ , you can take as long a look as you need.” Nick rose on his footpads.

“Pff.” The dingo smoothed his paws down his tightly fastened jacket before stepping forward with a swagger. “Get to work any big cases?”

“Mostly traffic. Still a rookie, though.” Nick shrugged, edgeing a little closer again. “The paperwork. It’s a shocker.” He kept his tail low as he glanced at the ibex’s curved horns. 

”But, I did get to pitch in on a case when I was working as a uh,” he paused. “ _A consultant_.” 

Consultant. He’d liked the sound of that, and settled on it months ago at the Academy, where he’d been endlessly quizzed by the other recruits about what prompted his abrupt career change.

“ZPD’s first rabbit Officer, well, you’ve already met her,” — he waved a paw dismissively back to the apartment where Judy was no doubt enthusiastically filling out her charge book — “and yours truly,” — not-so-subtly indicating to himself — “we worked a couple of cases. Missing Mammals, Bellwether,” Nick said, lowering his voice.

The dingo made a face and shook his head, shrugging.

“Really,” Nick said flatly. “It was on like,  _all_ the news channels. For weeks.” 

“Hm,” the dingo hummed. “You’d think I’d remember something like that.” He looked thoughtful, resting a claw to his muzzle, arm propped on the other folded across his chest.

“Young sir,” Nick pressed his own claws to his chest, brows arched in mock indigence. “You  _wound_  me with your ignorance.” 

The corner of the dingo’s mouth ticked up and suddenly his affected frown broke with a  _hyuk-hyuk_  that pulled his shoulders up and set the other mammals in the pack smirking too. Their ears settled along with their postures and restless tails. Nick drew his own shoulders up higher now, straightening his back and bringing himself a little nearer their eye-line.

The cougar made a sucking noise with her teeth. “He thinks he’s being funny, Officer.”

“He rarely is, though,” the ibex added, smiling as he scratched at the tuft of short dark hair on his chin. The dingo scowled back, before rolling his eyes away.

“Yeah, we all saw it on ZNN, natch.” she shrugged and curling her lip a little, exposing her bright teeth. “Got pretty nasty here over the summer, you know.” She was looking down at her footpaws, curving inwards. Her shoulders rolled forward as she tucked her head back into them.

Pretty nasty.  _That’s the truth_ , Nick thought. 

That summer. It had begun with Judy and her dumb bunny mouth. There’d been Bellwether’s ascension — how quickly  _that_ had happened and how  _readily_  it had been accepted. Then came the rabbit shaped gap in his life and the fear he had of his own thoughts.

He was all too aware of how  _nasty_  it had got. 

“The rabbit cop said some pretty dumb things.” The cougar was kneading her arm with a paw, claws snagging a little in the heavy cotton of her over-jacket.

“Hm. Yes, yes she did,” Nick nodded in quiet concession.

The ibex looked his fellow pack-mates before gazing towards the old beaver’s apartment, a little distance away. “Old Mrs. Holt. That was in the summer.” 

“Mrs. Holt?” Nick asked, his ears rising once more. Judy’s name-check hadn’t mentioned a  _Mrs. Holt._

“Yeah. Never see many cops in Happytown, usually.” The cougar was still kneading her arm. “Saw  _plenty_  that day.”

The ibex looked at the beaver’s little apartment quietly. Even the dingo had grown pensive, and when Nick had asked, the three mammals recounted their recollection of what had happened that one bright morning in that last dark summer.

Afterwards, Nick drew a long breath. It was turning out that these three paid attention to the comings and goings of the residents of Redwood Heights.

“So, no visitors now?  _At all?_ ” Nick asked, quietly.

“Not really,” the cougar started down at her feet, pointing them inwards and flexing up on her pads. “I think there’s his nurse, but that’s only every couple weeks. Oh, wait.”

“There was a sheep, though,” she added, thoughtfully. ”Used to come down and help him, with his garden.”

“This sheep, did he live here? At the Heights?” asked Nick.

“Yeah, up in Sequoia Three somewhere,” the cougar nodded up at the overgrown building opposite. “A real Meadowlander hick.” Nick watched as the cougars tail moved lazily from side to side, her body tensing fractionally. “He cleared out though, week ago, maybe? The supers had to come and deal with the smell after he left, because he’d  _really_  stunk up the place. They thought he’d been growing Nip, y’know, but Nip doesn’t smell like, well,  _whatever_  that was.”

“Not that you’d know, of course.” Nick arched his brow.

“Right,” the cougar said after a moment. “Honestly, though. It was more like some skunks had a real fine time up there.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Supers were mad as hell,“ said the dingo. “Social needed the apartment to move a family in.” He snapped his claws with a loud  _click_. “Bad smell or no, spots don’t stay empty round here for long.”

“Did any of you ever speak to him, this sheep from Meadowlands?” Nick asked finally. He wished he’d gotten his notebook out, but the second he did that, the spell would be broken along with the trust of the three mammals.

The cougar swayed with a frown. “Nuh-uh. He never talked to  _us_  either.“ She motioned a claw between herself and her canid friend, the dingo, shaking her head. Her mouth was a little crooked line now. “ _Some_  mammals think we're, well,” she shrugged, “we’re not what you’d call, uh, approachable.”

“Hm. Can’t say I’d noticed,” Nick said quietly.

“How about you? You ever talk to him?” The fox turned the ibex. 

“Nup, he’d just walk right by,” the ibex’s ears flicked dismissively. “I always assumed ‘cos I was hanging around with predators, like her.”

The cougar looked guarded for a moment, before she curled her lip to let out a little growl. The ibex stuck his rough tongue out in response. He held his hooves up, curved into mock claws. The cougar’s teeth shimmered and, Nick noticed, both mammals’ ears had risen up and tucked forward.

The dingo sighed at the pair’s display and rolled his eyes, nose twitching. “Uff, get a  _room_ , you two,” he muttered, breaking into a few  _hyuks_. 

The cougar, laughing, pushed a paw out to unbalance the ibex. “Knock it off,” she breathed, her eyes lingering. With a faint growl, she thrust her paws tightly into her jacket pockets, momentarily glancing around with what to Nick looked like a pang of embarrassment, before levelling her gaze to her feet once more.

And then, with a twitch of his own nose now, Nick leaned as close as he could to the ibex without threatening the mammals space.

“Hey, you want to be a cougar, you be a cougar, big guy,” Nick shrugged. The dingo let out another  _hyuk_  as the ibex shuffled awkwardly. 

Nick looked on. “You can ignore the Dingus here. He hadn’t even seen a  _fox cop_  before today.” The cougar laughed under her breath as the dingo huffed, arms folding protectively.

“Oh. Looks like rabbit cop's done with old Holt,” she noted.

The pack suddenly grew quiet, looking around as Judy padded over to their little patch of Redwood Heights. Nick sensed their change, their ears aloft, backs straightening and tails quivering again as the rabbit approached.

“Oh. Well, then. Duty calls,” Nick sighed. He had begun leaning casually against the wall alongside them and lifted off with a shove of his shoulder.

“Officer,” the cougar smiled knowingly, lifting her shoulders. The ibex nodded as Nick thumbed his hat back from his eyes a little.

“You’re alright, mate. As fox cops go.” grinned the dingo.

Nick turned to slunk away with finger-pistols and a wink. “Glad to hear I made a good impression.”

“Not interrupting, am I, Slick?” Judy asked as the fox padded close.

She stood with her charge book and the tightly wrapped evidence bag in one paw, her hat clasped in the other, leaning a little on one footpaw to peer around Nick at the three mammals behind him. They started looked back at her, the ibex, with a flick of his ear turned up the little radio beside him.

“Not at all, just finishing up a little community outreach, Carrots.” Nick pointed a claw back towards the pack. “So, you get to exercise the short arm of the law?” 

The two Officers began to walk. He’d expected a rise from the rabbit, but instead, Judy just hummed distantly.

“Everything okay?” He stopped short, listening to her breathing quietly through her twitching nose, mouth pinched tight.

“Hm. Yes, okay, sort of, I think,” Judy brushed the back of a paw across her cheek.

“Oh. Well, thanks for the clarity, Carrots.”

“I thought someone  _bad_  was doing something  _wrong_. With this.” Judy held up the evidence bag, wrapped tight around the repeller. 

“But now, I  _think_  they, well — Mr. Holt, he was trying to do something he thought was  _right_.” Her attentive ears dropped a little lower as she swung her paws about.

“And it, well, it feels  _right_  to me too, even though it  _was_  the wrong thing to do.” Judy had stopped now, stood ahead of Nick.

The fox quietly watched her for a moment. “So you  _didn’t_  throw the book at Mr. Holt?”

“I gave him a verbal warning, for this,” the repeller rattled in Judys paw. “No-one got hurt, and no-one pressed charges, so how could I book him for just trying to do the best he can? I nearly did.  _Ugh_ , you know?”

“Zootropolis,” Nick sighed, reaching for his aviators. “Mammals live here, Fluff. You’ll get used to it.”

She blinked, giving Nick the slightest of nods as he walked on past her, unfolding his sunshades carefully in his paw as he went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't get to a point where the ibex, cougar and dingo could let Nick know their names without it feeling shoe-horned in or making the chapter significantly longer. Maybe they'll get a chance some other time.


	7. Side by Side, All Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopps and Wilde attempt to piece together and make sense of the goings-on at Redwood Heights.

When Nick had mentioned he’d learnt of another of Russell’s curious leaving presents, one that might give up a former address for the sheep, Judy had _insisted_ they both took a circuit up and around the tower of Sequoia Three to investigate before finally calling the job in and heading back to the Prowler. 

They had climbed up through the stairways, sometimes under cover, and sometimes open to the sky. All around were markings made in spray paint, more obvious than scent alone and far more permanent. Whitewashed doors peeled to reveal old,  _old_  colours beneath. All around, the once smooth render-work that was sculpted along the paving, carved about the terraces and cupped around the alcoves had been yellowed and marked, patinated by decades of clinging air and scuffing paws. There was a feeling of age and of use, but also of neglect and abandonment.

Judy followed the stiffening sharpness of vinegar and soap along the narrow terrace, four stories up now. Nick’s nostrils flared too, catching the faded acrid note of what they took to be skunk spray, still keen despite the cleaning products. His claws curled a little.

The door to the apartment where the mingling scents were strongest hung open, caught on the night-chain. There was an aroma something like mint now, Judy noted with a twitching nose. Her stiff ears pivoted forward behind her hat as she heard voices rise over a television set playing somewhere. The door began to pull slowly, cautiously ajar as the Officers approached. 

Judy’s ears fell back as she glimpsed a pair of eyes that caught a hint of daylight, reflecting back from within the dim interior and fearfully guarding the narrow threshold that marked out the apartment Russell had once occupied. 

Judy made to advance, her notebook at the ready, when she felt a paw on her shoulder. She turned and looked up at Nick, stood beside her. She hadn’t noticed him draw close. With tucked back ears, he shook his head.

“We can get building services to confirm it,” he said, and turned quietly back to the stairs. With a lingering look at those eyes that were full of fear at the doorway, Judy stepped back to follow.

 

* * *

 

Judy stared past her frowning reflection in the windshield.

She had passed her books, papers and evidence bag over to Nick to help stow as soon as he’d clambered into the Prowler. After pulling on her seatbelt and running a claw under the length of it, up over her shoulder to smooth out the slack, she sat with her wrists resting on the top of the steering wheel, breathing steadily.

Judy had been trained to cabin drill, to take a few considered moments to carefully check everything was in good shape with the Prowler. It was second nature now, to check the gears, the brakes, the emergency equipment. Recently, she’d also begun to include herself as the first item in that checklist, even before starting the engine. She found the breathing and the posture and those few moments were all it took to clear her head and help her focus.

But this time, she rolled her lips over her teeth as her paws twitched and began to drum on the wheel. The drumming reached a quick crescendo.

Judy took a sharp breath, eyes snapping wide. “He was given that repeller, you know.”

“Mr. Ardmond C. Holt,” Nick said, slowly.

“Mm.” She looked across at the fox sat next to her, a scowl flashing across her face as she spotted him cribbing notes from her notebook.

“Oh,  _Crackers_ , Nick!” she snatched it back, bringing it closed with a sharp snap. Nick’s ears tucked back in surprise. “You really need to stop doing that,” she said firmly as she waved the notebook at him. “Your notebook,  _your_  notes.”

“But yours are so  _detailed_ ,” he whined. “Besides — “

“ _As_  I was saying, ” she cut him off with sharper eyes before he could protest too much further. He made a little  _tsk_ , smacking his lips as Judy prompted him with an outstretched paw to replay the conversation.

“Yes, Okay. Ardmond C. Holt. He was given the repeller,“ he said with a monotone, swinging his own paw as he spoke, an extended fore-claw tracing a few lazy circles. “By a sheep,” he added.

Judy’s nose twitched. “Russell. Surname  _unknown_.” She tapped a claw on the gear-stick, deep in thought.

Nick removed his hat and picked up the repeller in his idle paws, holding it cautiously as if it might start wailing again without warning.

“There’s no serial numbers,” Judy remarked, looking across as Nick sat tumbling it over and feeling the weight. He rubbed the pad of his thumb-claw over one of the surfaces, the plastic evidence bag crinkling as he did so.

“Well, Carrots, that’s because  _someone_  — I’m guessing our sheep — took the serial numbers  _off_ ,” he said plainly. “Might be something on the inside of the case, but if you go to the trouble of scrubbing markings like that,” He tapped a claw to the side of the repeller. Judy could just make out the streaks from vigorous sandpapering. “You’ll scrub  _all_  the markings.” 

He coughed, raising his eyebrow. “So I’ve heard.” He shifted a little in his seat as he examined the box further.

“Yeah, see,” he confirmed. “It’s been opened. The screws are stripped.” He pointed them out for Judy. The star-shaped slots of the screw-heads had been worked into little pits by inexpert hooves, or perhaps paws. He scoffed. “But, it does seem like a lot of trouble to go to get distance from something that isn’t  _technically_  illegal, Carrots.”

“It does, Slick.” Judy nodded. “A  _suspicious_ amount of trouble.” She folded one paw across her chest, and held the other to her lips for a moment. 

“Our sheep, Russell, he gives the repeller to Mr. Holt, he heads off in a hurry to the Rainforest,” Judy continued, “For  _work_ , apparently, and leaves his apartment in a state that,” she waved her paw at Nick. “As you rather colloquially put it, must have  _stunk like a skunk’s very bad day_.”

Nick’s nose wrinkled and he picked a claw at the seal of the Prowler windows above him.

“Hm. Did anyone mention whether they’d happen to seen Russell with any other mammals? Like a skunk, perhaps?” Judy asked, carefully considering where the scent might have come from.

Nick shook his head. “No.” He wrinkled his nose again, and stared at his paws, “How would you even  _begin_  getting that scent out of wool?”

Judys eyes widened at the thought, and she hunched up her shoulders with a shudder.

“So, what we have here is a routine callout, that ends in us finding suspicious devices, unexplained scents, and a suspect who has covered pretty much all of his tracks before vanishing.” She tucked her notebook into her claw-vest and rested her paws on the steering wheel once more, wriggling back into her seat.

“You know what this means,” she asked, eyes closed for a moment. “Don’t you?”

Nick watched as her shoulders rose and fell. 

“ _Paperwork_ ,” she breathed.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Nick groaned as he ran his claws over his furrowed brow.

 

* * *

 

Slowly, Judy and Nick ran down their shift and filled out their patrol hours, tracing out the Savannah-Sahara traffic patrol circuit in the Prowler.

It was a wholly unremarkable patrol, but had bagged them a number of speeding motorists, and an abnormally loaded megafauna flatbed that had chosen to ignore weight limits and city traffic restrictions.

Later, when the driving log timer had chimed, and Judy dutifully pulled up in a small parking lot for a rest break, Nick had skulked around the Prowler kicking up dust, and was now slouching on the rear crash-bar with his elbows up and shoulders high, taking in the warm Sahara evening. Lit by the little cabin light above, Judy had remained in her seat by herself, thinking about Adrmond Holt. 

Judy couldn’t really compare upbringings, she knew, but back in the warrens of Bunnyburrow, full of extended families that grew as large as suburbs, a rabbit there could grow up and grow old with hundreds of siblings on all sides. The sense of community was palpable, and a rabbit was never far from another, never really alone.

Perhaps Ardmond Holt had come from similar beginnings before he and his wife Juniper had chosen to live in Redwood Heights, which was practically a suburb itself. But things were very different here in Zootropolis, and now Juniper was gone, Ardmond had barely any contact with all those mammals that lived side by side around him. He was struggling by himself to hold onto his memories and the garden that gave them meaning.

And that struggle was what drove Ardmond Holt to use the repeller to keep those mammals even further away from him, it had seemed.

Things were very different here in Zootropolis, and Judy Hopps wondered why it should be so.

“Carrots,” said Nick, leaning with on his elbows on the seat next to her, breaking her reverie. 

“Hm?” She looked over from her boosted position at the wheel as the cabin filled with the scent of warmth, sand and fox.

Nick grinned. “I believe the point of the mandated driving break is that you actually get out of the Prowler, no?”

They'd continued on, and the day grew steadily dimmer as they reached the cusp of the Northern Orbital, now a slow rush-hour river of red and white. As they looped through the interchange for the return leg back to the Precinct with their patrol hours almost full, they turned to face back towards the setting sun, turning the sky from bright gold to dusty red behind the glittering silhouette of the Palm Hotel.

 

* * *

 

The Precinct offices hummed with low evening conversation and the occasional chirp of telephones.

Nick looked left, eyes shifting around, then right, carefully. He unfolded his yellow eyewear and, with a little sigh and sump of his shoulders, slid them on. It meant not having to deal with quite so many lousy headaches, but they’d begun to attract unwanted comments from other Officers. He blinked at his screen, acclimating to the increased contrast as he began to type up his duty log.

Beside him, Judy was staring intently at her own computer screen. Her claw made a little scraping noises as she slowly dragged it down the track-pad next to her keyboard. Nick’s ear quivered.

“You’re not still looking for leads on that sheep?” he asked, claws poised over his keyboard. “You know, there’s a very real possibility, Officer Hopps, that he may have given you what we refer to as  _the slip_.”

“Hm,” she buzzed through tight lips, not breaking her gaze.

Plucking a coffee-ringed sheet of ZPD letterhead someone had left lying around near her chosen spot on the team desk, Judy quickly snatched up a pen and, after scribbling a little daisy-loop to loosen the ink, took a note before folding the paper neatly in half.

“I have some other leads to work up,” she breathed. 

Clutching at the folded paper as she arched her back, Judy stretched out the tension before finally pushing out of her seat. She landed lightly, almost silently on the carpet-tiled floor and thrust out a paw. 

“C’mon, Wilde. Pass me that repeller. I’m going to run it down to technical, see what they make of it.”

He passed the wrapped repeller that had sat between them down to Judy, and as she padded away he turned back to his report to re-read the last line and to try and recover his train of thought.

_Officer Lau, D K, (Special Disposals, 429) proceeded to deactivate the repeller and not before time, I might add. It was driving me completely nuts. But even with those ears of hers, Officer Hopps was unaffected by the noise, and was_

The cursor blinked at the end of the unfinished line. That noise. What was it the pangolin had said?

_It doesn’t affect mammals working, but it keeps others away._

_Working_ , he thought, and wondered just what it was the sheep called Russell had got himself into, that had put him in possession of a device like that, and what he might have been  _working_  on up there in that dark little apartment numbered Four Ten, in Sequoia Three, Redwood Heights.


	8. A Little Difference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Don’t stay in the office too late, Slick.”_
> 
> _“And this advice, coming from you, Carrots?”_

“Look, we’re really very busy.” 

The leopard raised an eyebrow as he tapped idly upon the keyboard in front of him.

“Yes, but I’m not asking for a  _favour_. It’s for a case,” Judy scowled, as she held up the evidence bag. “I need to have this reviewed, as  _evidence_.”

The leopard sighed. “For forensic evidence, you’ll have to check that into the job queue,” The leopard calmly slid a sheet of paper over to the rabbit, until it hung from the desk edge. “Blank ink and capitals only, please,” he added.

Judy huffed as she padded away over to the tiered tables scattered around the waiting area in front to the Technical Offices. She stared back at the impassive leopard at the front desk and the alternating panels of striped glass behind him. 

Just beyond those barriers she noted a bear, in scrubs, leaning casually against an equipment bench, talking to a marmot who was perched near on a high-chair. Neither looked  _particularly_  busy, but she decided not to pursue it.

She pulled one of the many wheeled stools stiffly over to her chosen tier and jumped up, grumbling under her breath as she gripped the check-in paperwork in both her paws. But there was something missing.

“Oh. There’s never a pen,” she began, twisting, casting around for a writing implement. Of  _course_ , she’d left her own on the team desk. She padded briskly back to the front desk. 

The leopard regarded the approaching ear-tips. “Excuse me, may I borrow a pen?” Judy asked, peering into his view.

He handed one over to her and without glancing away from his screen resumed typing, the keys making soft noises beneath his claws.

A polite  _ah-hem_  caused the leopard to glance back down, brow furrowed. A pair of earnest eyes looked back.

“Do you happen to have one with  _black_  ink, do you?” Judy asked, a thin smile drawing patiently across her lips. 

The leopard rolled his eyes as he stretched across the desk. He made a grunt and returned to hand a single black-barrelled pen to the rabbit as she rocked on her footpaws. “Thank you,” she said breezily, padding back to the seating area.

Checkboxes ticked, references noted and reviewed once, twice then thrice, and finally, an ID tag attached to the evidence bag, Judy returned the check-in paperwork, evidence and all, to the front desk.

The leopard reached down to take the paperwork from the rabbit, and glanced down the check-in sheet for far longer than Judy found comfortable. She hadn’t presented her handwriting to such scrutiny since she was nine, and began to wonder for a moment if she’d made some error or misprint.

The leopard squinted for a moment as he glanced at Judy, before placing the written sheet on the document scanner behind him. The little device whirred as Judy looked on incredulously.

“Wait, are you digitising that?” she asked. “You could have just done that on the  _computer_ , right there. I could have sent you an  _email_  and it would have been quicker.” 

The leopard didn’t react as he took the evidence bag from Judy and placed it along with the paperwork in small tray. “We’ll process that as soon as we can,” — a pause as he glanced at the paper on the tray — “Officer Hopps.” 

He bused it through a small security door behind him, and sat back down with a sigh. “We’re really very busy,” he said, returning his paws to his keyboard and lidded eyes to his screen. The marmot bounded over behind the glass partition.

 

* * *

 

Judy sat tapping the back of the folded letterhead upon the side of her small mug. She propped her head up on a paw whilst she gazed into the distance, her ears hanging limply across her shoulders.

After checking in the repeller with the Technical department, she’d paused at the break room to wait for the water-boiler to heat up enough to brew a mug of tea, as the coffee steaming away in the machine was looking particularly  _ominous_. She’d been running things over and over, and over again. The solitary beaver, Ardmond Holt. The disturbances at Redwood Heights. The sheep named Russell.

She was  _frustrated_. 

The evidence such as it was, well, she wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful that Technical would find anything useful, despite Nick’s allusion that there was something  _criminal_ going on.

The lack of detail about Russell was  _annoying_. 

She and Nick hadn’t got a surname, or even a forwarding address. When they’d tried, Redwood Heights Building Services had requested to see a warrant, and of course, as there’d been no crime, not even  _probable cause_  could be invoked to produce the information.

She sighed and dropped her gaze, unfolding the letterhead to reveal the number she’d written, next to her looping daisy-wheel scribble. 

There, held in her paw was the only thing she felt she could follow up. A lead that could help make a little difference, at least. She quietly took her phone from her belt, she began to dial.

“Oh, Hello,” she began as the other end of the call picked up. She pulled back her shoulders, ears rising to stand alert once more. “This is Officer Judy Hopps, ZPD.” There was a pause. “Hi,” she said quietly, before taking a breath as the other party spoke. “Um, well, I’m looking for some information, actually. Perhaps you can help?”

 

* * *

 

Nick idly tapped Judy’s pen on the desk, much to the annoyance of Wolford sat opposite, trying to ensconce himself in a makeshift partition of display screens. The wolf’s ears twitched in time with each tap.

The fox was still wrangling his duty log, finding the events of the last shift difficult to put out of his mind, and importantly, into his reports. 

Earlier, he’d smoothly chided Judy over their investigation being little more than a confusing dead end. Russell was the one that got away.  _Poof_ , he’s gone — although Nick was fairly sure the sheep wasn’t any kind of  _Kangaroo Sozë_. He huffed through his nose at his joke, but in his own mind it rankled just as much as it undoubtedly did in Judy’s.

A world away from here, he’d learnt hard and fast the ways in which mammals became predictable and prone to patterns. He’d gotten good at it. He’d had to, working all those angles just to make it through to the next sunrise. 

But now there was no pattern he could find, no drive, no desire he could easily discern, and the more he thought about their absence, the more uneasy the open loop made him feel. 

A world away from here, he thought, you could easily find an open loop suddenly close about your neck.

“Nick.”

Judy’s voice made his ears leap to attention. He looked around to see her clambering up on her seat and begin to clear her spot next to him.

“Nick, Have you got much longer? I’m going to call it an evening.”

Nick slowly shook his head. “No, I just need to finish my…  _wait_.” His eyebrows arched over the top of the yellow lenses of his eyewear.

“Did you just say you were going to  _call it an evening_?” He swung around. Judy stared. 

“A mere  _twenty minutes_  over shift?” He clasped his paws together theatrically, a look of affected fear spreading across his face. “This truly is the end of days, Carrots.”

“Oh, ho-ho, what about you, Slick?” Judy dropped from her seat. “Fox-about-town with no place to be this evening? It’s twenty minutes over shift after all,” she smirked. The corner of Nick’s eye twitched.

“Touché,” he conceded with a shrug. “Well, you have your evening. I will valiantly battle through the last of this paperwork.”

“Don’t stay in the office too late, Slick,” she sighed, ignoring Nick’s mock pathos.

“And this advice, coming from you, Carrots?” He showed a hint of tooth in his grin.

She stuck out her tongue as she briskly twisted on the tips of her toes to stride away. Nick laughed, not unkindly, as he watched her leave.

 

* * *

 

Nick swirled the black,  _black_  coffee around, nose wrinkling in anticipation as he raised the mug to his lips. A moment of hesitation, a sip, a swallow and then a  _wince_.

He’d finally wrapped up his duty log — which had taken far longer than he’d anticipated through lack of notes — and with a tap-tap of a claw, he submitted it for review.

Nick’s ears twitched at the buzz and plink of the lights in the now silent, empty team area. He pushed his mug away. Removing his eyewear the fox sighed, settling back into his seat and trying to focus on something that was further away than his screen for a moment of two.

“Wilde?” enquired a small urgent voice to his side.

He slowly angled his chair, and peered down the length of his muzzle to the marmot beside him.

“Hopps’ partner right?” the marmot asked quickly, with a twitch of his tail. Nick nodded. The marmot was in plain clothes. With his sore eyes, Nick could just make out the word  _Technican_  on the pass-card hung about his neck.

“She around?” the marmot asked again, stepping forward.

“Left for the night.” Nick indicated over to the clear spot next to him.

The marmot twitched his head to one side, and blinked. “Really?”

“I  _know_ , right?” Nick put his paws up. “Anything I can do?”

“Well,” the marmot began, shifting from footpaw to footpaw. “she dropped something into Technical earlier.”

“Oh, box about yay-big?” Nick made a square shape with his paws. 

The technician nodded quickly. “Repeller. Still checking it out, but — damnedest thing — third time we’ve seen one this month. Found a bunch in the trunk of a car Traffic brought in, and one of them was surrendered at the front desk the other day. Some kits had found it on waste-ground near Steam Street, up in the Rainforest District.”

Nick’s ears rose.

“That car. Little beat up run-around? Ca-” He stopped himself. “Officer  _Hopps_  and I pulled that in.”

Nick leant closer. “A daring pursuit, let me tell you.” he grinned.

“Hm,” hummed the marmot distantly. “Had a hard time with that one. Traffic team were convinced there was ‘Howler in it, but there were far too many  _other marks_  for a clear evidential scent on  _anything_  in the end.”

“Typical pool car,” Nick shrugged. Shared around its various nefarious users, it had likely seen and hosted all manner of activity while in service. “Don’t suppose you’ve located a keeper for it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

The marmot twitched his head quickly to one side. “No, we find the VINs. Finding the keepers is  _your_  job.”

“Hm, well. I’ll be sure to pass on the message.” He smiled pleasantly and as the technician turned to leave, the fox turned back to his screen, smile evaporating and face suddenly very serious indeed as he lifted his eyewear into place.

Alone now and eyes far sharper behind those yellow lenses, he leant forward, his claws dancing on the keyboard as he searched.

He began to sift back through his own report logs, until:

_Incident: HW56/14/A Officer Hopps, J L, (Driver), Officer Wilde, N P, (Observer) Reports, Audio with Transcript_

He opened the audio file. “Hotel Whiskey Five Six to Dispatch. Uh… time is oh-one-thirty-two,” his own voice, tense and excited. He scrubbed forward. 

There was a muffled sound like fabric crumpling and Nick could hear himself distantly groaning about a red light. There was a quiet whimper, just audible under the sirens. He frowned and scrubbed again.

“Fifty, five-zero on Fern, onto interchange towards Rainforest.” said Judy now, calm and purposeful. He looped back.

“Rainforest.” Judy repeated.

The evening drew on as he found the vehicle report and arrest log from that night. A one  _William Gruff_ had been driving. The goat hadn’t said much in interview it seemed, as stoic as his council had advised him to be.

And then, back to his own recent task log, the reports of unexplained noise in the Rainforest District, still marked for observation, and recently marked as  _intelligence_ , too, he noticed. He scanned their summaries, their locations, and stopped at one in particular.

_Steam Street, Rainforest District._

It wasn’t long before Nick had found the report on the surrendered repeller the marmot technician had spoke of. Technical had noted an absence of any trackable marks on that one too, but when Nick had leant close and studied the images depicting the little nondescript box, he could see the same small, star-slotted screws ground to pits by inexpert paws, or hooves.

Nick paused, working his claws to loosen his tie, which had begun to gather tight as he’d been leaning upon it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For readers who have come to this series via this work, the events leading up to the Hotel Whiskey Five Six Incident Report are covered in _Welcome To Traffic_ , and the noise reports are first referenced in _Painting The Climate Wall_.


	9. Towards the Warmth of the Sun

Judy awoke early, even on rest days.

It was  _cold_. 

The thin single-glazed panes of her apartment window were streaked with condensation, droplets hung like stars as they caught the streetlights. She stre _tched_ beneath her bed covers and a paw emerged to tentatively feel out for the nearby radiator. There was warmth, barely, about halfway down. 

With a sigh, she moved the covers aside and swung out of bed.

It wasn’t long before she drew a blanket close despite fur and night-clothes, as, illuminated by her desk lamp, she worked to set her little kettle to boil. The  _crack-cracking_  as the jug heated the water caused her ears to twitch, and she rotated them towards the exposed brick wall opposite, silence thankfully returning as her neighbours slumbered on, well used to Judy’s early starts.

She clambered up to her seat at the little table that filled the corner of her narrow room, paws cupped around the mug of fresh, golden tea she’d carefully placed ready. Steam curled eagerly upwards and the radio spoke quietly nearby.

_…with the front to the south, we’ve got air from Tundratown over Savannah Central, so be prepared for cooler than average temperatures this morning…_

Between her and the photographs of her family sat a folder, still open from the evening before, a few slips of paper and folded leaflets alongside a creased and coffee-ringed ZPD letterhead the only contents.

She sipped her tea, closed the folder and peeled away a note where she’d written  _Kara Albany, 10am, Tuft Row._  The clock at her bedside read  _06:27_ , and drawing her footpaws up, she stayed in her warm cocoon a little longer.

 

* * *

 

Judy held the door of her apartment open with one paw as she tucked papers into her satchel with the other, then, with a quick turn, pulled the door closed behind her. She drew her jacket up by the lapels, gathering it around the dark ZPD sweater she’d brought home over winter. It showed all the shed fur, but the warmth made up for that.

Padding down the corridor, descending steps to the cluttered lobby, she quickly ran a claw under her satchel strap to ensure it was sat comfortably. Stepping across the cold tiles, she emerged into the bright, crisp morning. 

The sunlight caused her to squint as she made her way to the bus stop that served her neighbourhood. She’d have ordinarily took the subway, but there was limited service today. _Maintenance_ , ZTA had said on the radio.

A glance at the arrival board above the shelter showed some minutes to spare. She stepped back a little from the gathering queue and pulled her phone from her pocket.

As the number rang out, she patiently folded her arm across her chest as a prop for the other. The voicemail picked up. She rolled her eyes.

“Hey, Slick. It’s Hopps. I’m heading to the meeting and then on from there,” she began. “If by  _some_  chance you’re awake later, give me a call.”

The bus rounded the corner, electric motor humming as the tall, narrow vehicle slowed quietly to a halt with a whisper of airbrakes.

“We can… grab lunch, maybe,” she added distantly, before hanging up.

The staggered, tiered doors of the bus hissed open, almost in unison and Judy, humming to herself, rejoined the queue, ducked her ears and padded quickly aboard.

 

* * *

 

_Now approaching, Tuft Row._

The automated announcement sounded with the usual broken cadence. Judy rose, a thumbclaw ringing the stop as she steadied herself against the paw-rail while the bus began to slow.

Judy’s nose twitched as she stepped out to the pavement from the open doors and padded towards a quokka stood a little way back from the bus shelter. The quokka shifted from footpaw to footpaw, her shoulders pulled up against the cool breeze.

“Kara Albany?” Judy discretely showed her warrant card to identify herself. “Judy Hopps.”

The quokka adjusted her spectacles and peered at the rabbit’s credentials. With a nod, she reached into her own jacket, unspooling a brightly corded lanyard that hung about her neck. Her photograph smiled back at Judy. 

“Officer Hopps. Good to see you,” Kara said, finally.

“Judy, please,” Kara took Judy’s outstretched paw. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you Downtown.”

Kara tucked her lanyard back into her jacket. “No, this worked. I’d only be coming back upon myself to get here. I get travel paid for, but I’m based up near Grass Street. Quicker to walk. There’s better uses for the money, sometimes.”

“Traffic was rotten. Have you been here long?” Judy glanced down the length of the street as a van clattered noisily past, slowing to a halt as it joined the lengthy queue at the intersection.

“No, not long.” Kara shrugged a shoulder. Judy’s nose twitched.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t…’ Judy’s brow knitted with concern.  _She should have called ahead,_  she thought, rather than keep her waiting, especially in —

“It’s fine,” Kara held up her paws to stop Judy from apologising further. “Anyway. I know Happytown well,” she said with a lopsided smile that made her cheek bulge a little. 

“I guess you only see the police reports,” Kara added.

“Until recently,” Judy said, paw tightening on the strap of her satchel. She could feel the heat in the tips of her ears. “Thanks you for getting in touch so soon.”

“Once we get an assignment, it all happens pretty quickly,” said Kara, buttoning up her jacket.

“We’re grateful for your time,” said Judy, as she cast her eyes towards the terraced towers a short distance away.

 

* * *

 

Judy rapped a paw against the door and waited. Kara stood to one side, paws clasped in front of her.

The door cracked open, the chain holding it fast as the elderly eyes of Ardmond Holt blinked in the warming sunlight. Judy showed her card once more. “Hello, Mr. Holt.”

“I remember you,” Ardmond said, quietly. He fumbled with the chain for a moment, before stepping back to open the door. It knocked against his walking frame.

“This is Kara Albany. We spoke about Kara, do you remember?” Judy glanced at Kara. She held out her lanyard and identity card so Ardmond could see.

“Kara,” Ardmond looked up, his eyes brightened a little by recollection. “Yes. Oh, yes. Come in, please.” he shuffled back into the doorway to let Judy and Kara pass. 

“Could you wipe your feet, please?” he asked.

 

* * *

 

The three of them had sat in Ardmond’s front room for a while. When Ardmond had offered them drinks, Kara had told him she’d take care of it, and helped him to his seat.

“Just tell me where you keep the makings, and I’ll sort the rest.” She started to set out some mugs and moved over to fill the kettle.

“So you’re a volunteer?” asked Ardmond. 

“I am,” said Kara. She placed Ardmond’s cup down on the table next to him. “But think of me as a friend, too. Someone to talk to, at least.”

Kara glanced at Judy, who was delicately chewing her lip as she sat forward, the tips of her footpaws resting on the worn carpet. They’d talked on the way to Redwood Heights, and could see that Judy had something further she needed to say.

“You know, you have a nice garden, Mr. Holt.” Kara began, “Why don’t I go have a look around and see if there’s anything I can do to help out there?” Kara stepped away, leaving the two alone.

“I wanted to apologise, Mr. Holt.”

The beaver blinked.

“I’ve lived here a long time, Miss Hopps. I’ve always tried to do the right thing, We,” — he glanced up at the photographs on the bookshelf — ”we always tried. I  _thought_  I was doing the right thing.”

 _And so did I_ , Judy thought, clenching her jaw a little as she remembered the last time they had sat together and talked.

“You told me it was wrong, to keep our garden like that.” Ardmond paused, wetting his lips. “It’s  _difficult_ , and I’d forgotten. I forget a lot of things. You shouldn’t have to apologise for helping me to remember.”

When Judy was given her ZPD badge that bright day last year, she'd sworn an oath as it had glinted on her chest like a fallen star.  _Had it really been that long?_ she caught herself wondering.

She'd reaffirmed that oath when she'd accepted her badge for a second time and even though the words rang in her ears every day, she felt now, sat here with Adrmond, she was still learning their meaning.

Ardmond rested his paws on his knees. “You can’t be mad at the trees for doing what they do,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. 

The rabbit and beaver both looked at each other in the silence.

Then, rising, she drew a breath. “You know, Mr. Holt, it’s warming up out there. Shall we see what Kara is doing in the garden?” 

He took her outstretched paw, and she helped him carefully to his feet.

 

* * *

 

Kara sat on her haunches upon the small tarpaulin she’d spread on the grass and beamed a wide, satisfied grin as the bright sun caught the tips of her fur.

She had pulled on a pair of gloves and had set to work tidying the accumulated rubbish and debris that had gathered over the week in Ardmond and Juniper’s little garden. She’d even padded over and carefully tipped the collection away into the somewhat overflowing bins, stacked near the service entrance. 

“I can help you prune these bushes too, if you like, Mr. Holt,” Kara smiled, gloved paws resting on her bent knees. Despite the tarp, her jeans had already begun to wick up the damp from the ground, but if it bothered her, she didn’t show it.

“You don’t have to kneel,” she said. ”I’ll do the low, you do the high?”

“Sure. I can still use my paws,” Ardmond said, as he manoeuvred his walking frame closer. Kara carefully handed him a pair of gloves.

“Kara.” Judy said quietly.

Kara looked up and nodded.

“Thank you, Kara.” Judy straightened her jacket and hitched her satchel over her shoulder. “You have a good afternoon, Mr. Holt,” she smiled, giving a little wave of her paw. The beaver waved with his own gloved paw, eyes bright in the warming midday sun.

As Judy began to walk down the narrow paved stones to the asphalt beyond, she caught sight of her partner in his civvies, talking to those three mammals, the cougar, ibex and dingo again. He was swaggering dramatically on the spot, arms tense as mimed carrying something heavy.  _War stories, no doubt_ , she thought.

As he caught sight of the rabbit, he grinned defensively, straightening up. Judy could hear staccato  _hyuks_  as he tugged his jacket straight and gave the three mammals a nod and salute. He slunk casually over towards her.

Judy folded her arms. “Nick.” 

“Community outreach, Carrots. They were interested in how we became partners.” He rolled his head. “So, I started with the Jumbo-Pop,” he added with a wink.

Judy’s eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything, Nick nodded towards the beaver and quokka. “So, all good?” he asked.

Judy glanced back at Kara and Ardmond, as they worked together in Ardmond’s garden. “Best of friends, already,” she said.

Judy’s eyes took in the fox, stood before her, his canvas jacket pulled tight. “I tried to call. You didn't have to come all this way in traffic.” she said.

“Yeah,” Nick dragged the word out. “Sorry. I was still at the Precinct.” He ruffled the fur of his neck, not meeting Judy’s eyes for a moment. When he did, she was frowning.

“I know, right?  _Up early_. And working _on a rest day._ ” he exclaimed. “What have you  _done_  to me, Carrots?”

Judy huffed a little laugh through her nose as she bowed her head. “The repellers?” she asked finally, as she looked back up to him.

Nick nodded, ”I think we might have enough to at least  _talk_  to Bogo—”

“ _Chief_  Bogo,” Judy interrupted.

“Hm-mm,” Nick hummed. “Yes, him.”

“We can all but try, Slick,” she mused. “That’s what we do at the ZPD.” 

He took a moment, before his head tilted to one side, ears rising. “Still up for lunch?”

“It’s going to be a bit late for lunch. It’s an hour bus-ride back at least, Nick.”

“Well, there’s always Happytown,” he said, rocking on his footpads. Judy shifted uneasily on hers.

“Happytown?” she asked, her voice a little uncertain now as she thought about the tumbledown district beyond.

“I know a place just half a block across,” he said, not with his usual grin, but a pleasant smile. His eyes were wide, and she felt the worry begin to leave her. “Street food,” he added.

“There’d better be salad,” she warned, rocking forward a little. She waved him through. “Lead on, Slick.”

And as she turned to follow him as he slunk past, she brushed a paw against one of the evergreen bushes that stood in Ardmond’s garden. It was a fragrant little thing, and Judy noticed the recent repair, a grafted branch growing anew.

She drew her paw back, catching ever so briefly the scent of juniper flowers, carried upon the breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this arc. 
> 
> I didn’t really anticipate I’d write quite so much around what was originally a one-shot, or that it would lead me to start building it into part of a series, but it was good practice to tackle something more substantial. I really enjoyed the process having not written anything like this in many years.
> 
> So what's next?
> 
> I’ve got a some ideas for one-shots, both in and outside this series. Writing in that format feels a lot less pressurised somehow, and I’d like to get in some more practice and preparation before I start the next large arc.
> 
> On that, I was originally going to try and resolve Russell's story here, but soon realised that it was far larger than the core story about Ardmond. We'll catch up with Russell soon, I think, but hopefully I took it far enough to create some interesting challenges to do so.
> 
> I’d also like to return to Redwood Heights at some point to try and pick up characters who I think deserve a little more exploration.
> 
> As always, comments are welcomed and appreciated.


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